My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One

Written by Heathcote Williams upon learning that the UK government was to spend £50 million on commemorating the centenary of the first world war. BBC News, 11 October 2012. Video and Narration by Alan Cox

My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One

My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One.At least they were in it, but not in it:Conscripted but never committed.

My Dad was called up in 1915,And then run over by a field gunIn an army camp at Lydd marsh in Kent,So he never actually made itAcross the Channel to fight.His pelvis and both legs were crushed,In his first week, in a training exercise,By a Howitzer rolling downhill.It weighed over thirty hundredweight.

While pushing and dragging the gun up a slopeMy Dad and the other eighteen-year-olds carried shells,Shells to be fed into the Howitzer's six-foot-long barrel.One of the group lost his footingAnd they lost control of the gun carriage,Then two were crushed by its cast-iron wheels;Each wheel being the height of a man's shoulder.One of them died, but my Dad survived.

As a child I was ashamed of the story,Naively wanting him to be a heroBut, of course, if he'd never been invalided out,I might never have come into existence.

There were a thousand Howitzers on the Western Front,Heavy, Swedish-made guns towed alongBy boys, men and horses from battle to battleWhich, by the war's end, had fired 25 million shells,Stealing thousands of lives, and generations unborn,Making the gun crews primary targets.

My Uncle Jack's connection to the warWas stronger than my Dad's, as Jack "saw action".He made it across the ChannelIn a Royal Artillery troopship,And lost the use of a limb in 1916.His arm was half severed by shrapnel:He held it in place until it was patched upAnd then he was returned to his unit,With a flask of iodine to dab on it.

Jack was in one of that war's most famous battles,One of those whose very name makes you well up –But Jack ran counter to the received wisdomAbout the soldiers serving in the Great WarWith its sentimental patina and its mythologized talesOf Nurse Edith Cavell, and the Angel of Mons,And lions led by donkeys and plucky Brits,Because my Dad's elder brotherNever really participated either,And he certainly never gave it his all.Jack had "reservations" was how my Dad put it.

More often than not Jack didn't have "one up the spout"Meaning he'd avoid putting a bullet in his gun,Because, with a dodgy arm, it was a nuisance to load itAnd when his hands were freezing he just thought 'sod it'.It was easy to escape their corporal's attention,And Jack said there were many others who did the same."Hundreds, if not thousands," Jack always claimed,Men whose instincts told them to do the minimum.

Heathcote Williams senior in army uniform 1915

Jack won the Military Cross, but not for that.He won it for dragging their Sergeant MajorBack into the trenches from No Man's Land,Where the Sergeant Major was lying wounded.

Jack's commanding officer came to know of itAnd Jack was "mentioned in dispatches" –The Army's understated wayOf saying that he'd shown courageIn undertaking his one-armed rescue,Though, as far as his fellow soldiers were concerned,Jack's exploit had been a waste of timeFor their Sergeant Major was unpopular,And in any case he was dead on arrival.

Jack lived with the taunts and the ribbingAbout his gesture having been pointless,And was even accused of doing it to "show off".Cripplingly shy, this was a knife to the heart,And it lasted long, long afterwards.Jack never picked up his Military CrossAnd whenever a family member mentioned it,He dismissed it as "a putty medal with a wooden string."

As a child I never quite knew what that meant,But apparently it was a common expression,Applied to the top brass when they visited the front,When they strutted up and down –Martinets with black gloves and swagger sticksFact-finding desk-jockeys from the War OfficeClanking away with their rows of flash medalsAnd drawing attention to themselves –Those below in the dugouts would mutter,"Putty medals with a wooden string."

"Your Uncle Jack lost all his friends in the trenches,"My Dad would say, "And he's never made any, ever again."And it was true, I never saw Jack with a friend.I saw him throughout my life, but he was always aloneExcept for his sister, Mabel, who looked after him.He never made another friend in over fifty years.

Neither he nor my father ever explained the war to me.It was just something that had happened to them.Something irrational that hung over them;A grisly cloud of spectral blood;A tumour that fogged the psyche;Something in their history that had spoiled both their lives.Stoically they never admitted to the painBut, looking back, my Dad was always in painAnd Jack could be painfully silentTo the point of catatonia.

Even though they were little more than children,They'd been forced to endure a random, excruciating painThat had confiscated parts of their bodies,Bodies that had been their birthright.

But afterwards each was able to exactA small but significant revengeBy their both giving the war some fifty yearsOf unremitting negative spin.They'd scoff at those who tried to romanticize it;They'd never buy poppies for their buttonholes;And on Remembrance Day they'd sayThat there was nothing worth remembering.To my father the cenotaph was "a monument to Jack's hell.""A traffic hazard", he'd say when we drove past it.And he'd curse it, that dreary Lutyens plinthWith its floral lifebelts laid beneath it,Lifebelts that save no one's lives,Propped up against a memorialThat's used to fetishize war after war."They should have a picture on it," my Dad said"Of your Uncle Jack living beside rotting corpses –"Pictures of doomed youth with froth-corrupted lungs."(He had a first edition of Wilfred Owen.)

Uncle Jack 1910

As a child I naively wanted to boast about JackAnd to tell other boys that he'd won the MCAs if that would make me seem brave too.When my father overheard me onceI got a dressing-down that I remember to this day:He accused me of "throwing Jack's weight about."You never ask yourself do you, why Jack never picked it up?His medal? Well, he wasn't proud of it. He was ashamed,When his friends are there, six foot deep in Belgian mud.If he doesn't swank about it, why should you?"

When my father died, Jack invited me to go out for a mealOn the first Friday of the month, every year till he died.The meals were largely silent. His bad dream was still there,Even in the nineteen-seventies.His mind was still numbed by something whose originsWere inexplicable and which he'd never decoded.A war that had caused another war, like a cancerThat people still seem unable to cauterize.Over the years, I'd winkle out his memoriesAs tactfully as I could.

As a boy I seem to have been set the uninvited taskOf probing a world that they wished never existed,And which left them wishing it would go away.

Jack didn't mind talking about actual eventsAllowing himself only to recount the facts,But never touching upon his emotions.A waiter would bring the cheese trolley and most monthsJack would tell the same story about a mule cartThat had arrived behind the lines ferrying an enormous cheese,A Dutch cheese which they'd all salivated at the sight of.Jack's best friend from the same street in ChesterImpulsively ran towards it, his mouth wateringOnly to be picked off by a German sniper."Fell down against the cheese", Jack said,"I won't eat the stuff now."And I'd nod and say, "No,"As understandingly as I could manage.

Heathcote Williams junior with Uncle Jack 1964

The story was unchanging, several times a year.A hapless waiter wheeled off the cheese trolley untouched."I ever tell you about that?" Jack would ask at the end.I was sure that he half knew he had, but why not?If the fact of it never went away.

My Dad and my Uncle were in the First World WarThough it's not quite the whole story,Because neither of them were exactly in it,Not in the way that most people might think,But from their experiences I was able to learnWhat callous folly had killed thirty million.

They were forced to serve King and Country for no reason,They both had lifelong scars, and got nothing in return –Nothing from the King, and nothing from the Country,But both ended up certain there must be another wayAnd for that I've been grateful to them, ever since.

They may or may not be in some other world nowBut something is certain, if only to me.They won't be commemorating World War One